Book
Rivers Lost, Rivers Regained: Rethinking City-River Relations
The paper discusses the annual cycle of the St. Petersburg urban life through the context of the long-term changes in the patterns of the Neva use.
In the article necessity of state policy correction in relation to the cities in Russia towards decentralization and differentiation is stated. The mechanisms that allow to increase autonomy of the large cities and urban agglomerations are offered along with the corresponding calculations and expert estimates. Also attention is paid to the problems of absence at the state level of urban agglomeration concept and imperfection of state statistics concerning cities.
The paper studies population dynamics of 75 regional centers and secondary cities in the Russia’s regions. The information base for the analysis was population census data from 1959 to 2010 and the current population accounting for 2011–2017. In the vast majority of regions, the center dominates over the secondary city significantly. This manifests itself both in the absolute parameters of the population and in the share of centers and secondary cities in the populations of their regions. In 31 Russian regions, the share of the center by 2002 had already reached 35% and continued to grow. After 15 years, it exceeded 45% in 13 regions. The upper limit of the possible population concentration in the regional center has not yet been revealed. Over time, the prevalence of centers over secondary cities has been increasing. The analysis showed that the possibilities of population increase in secondary cities depend on the size of said population: among secondary cities with a population greater than 250 000, they continue to increase; among secondary small cities, the share between depopulating and growing cities hardly changes at all. Thus, trends towards centrism in the regions prevail over polycentricity. The population is increasingly concentrated at separate points, vested with power. These processes are based on historical and evolutionary (history of settlement, development, and urbanization), functional–economic, administrative-territorial, and demographic determinants. Recently, an increasingly important factor contributing to population concentration is the institutional factor (associated with the execution of capital functions by regional centers and reducing the costs of business and consumers).
This volume discusses post-socialist urban transport functioning and development in Russia, within the context of the country’s recent transition towards a market economy. Over the past twenty-five years, urban transport in Russia has undergone serious transformations, prompted by the transitioning economy. Yet, the lack of readily available statistical data has led to a gap in the inclusion of Russia in the body of international transport economics research. By including ten chapters of original, cutting-edge research by Russian transport scholars, this book will close that gap. Discussing topics such as the relationship between urban spatial structure and travel behavior in post-soviet cities, road safety, trends and reforms in urban public transport development, transport planning and modelling, and the role of institutions in post-soviet transportation management, this book provides a comprehensive survey of the current state of transportation in Russia. The book concludes with a forecast for future travel development in Russia and makes recommendations for future policy. This book will be of interest to researchers in transportation economics and policy as well as policy makers and those working in the field of urban and transport planning.
The paper discusses the technological specialization and patent portfolios of the Russian ‘technograds’ – the cities which are the key actors to contribute to the development of new technologies in the country. A patent analysis used for the study allowed us to identify technological domains where these cities have significant competitive advantage and high potential for further progress. According to the research-intensity of the domains prevailing in their technological specialization, the technograds might be divided into three categories: oriented towards mostly high technologies (Moscow, Saint-Petersburg, Tomsk), low technologies (Krasnodar, Perm), and those with mixed specialization including both high and low tech (Voronezh, Ufa, Kazan, Novosibirsk, Ekaterinburg, and Samara).
To achieve the aim of the research, a new methodological approach was elaborated to analyze patent data for individual cities and other smaller geographical units. As a result, the paper might be of interest not only for practitioners and decision makers on the regional and municipal levels, but also for researchers in the fields of regional economics, economic geography and economics of science, technology and innovation.